Life in the Confusing Lane

Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Lovely Rhonda celebrated another year of planetary domination last weekend, so we took this show on the road and spent a couple of days in Seattle just for a change of scenery.

It was fun and we might have gotten some interesting photos had I brought the camera. I did take some little movies which I’ll post also, but here are some pictures from my cellphone.

We didn’t know what the hell this was, but we later googled it. Advertising firm.

The interior looked like a faux Chinese restaurant! Far too cool to make any sense.

We went to the Experience Music Project, which was fun. Perhaps the most compelling thing was this sign for the washrooms.

This one suggests we were not having any fun, but we really were. The Lovely Rhonda and her BFF, Bobby, waiting in the bar at The Keg.

This picture is not birthday related, so deal. Today as I was preparing to leave the house, our youthful yet curmudgeonly cat affectionately known as Grampaw (because he’s all YOU KIDS GIT OFF OUR PROPERTY!) decided that Otto’s bed was looking pretty comfy. Otto didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, obviously, but he’s just smart enough (barely) to hold very still and wait it out.

A little while ago we got some half-price admissions to an indoor play space off of one of those group deal sites, and since the children were off school today I took a day off so we could all go, and I quote, “let the kids have some fun.”

Well, we thought the rules were simple: use the toilet for its intended purpose, instead of whatever garments you might be wearing on your nether regions, and we will stay and play. Violate this rule and we will go home.

Naturally, we had to head home at least an hour ahead of what we had hoped, sacrificing wholesale gaming slaughter a promising game of Yahtzee with friends. Thanks, kids.

In the car the most disgruntled one proclaims: “Well when we get home I’m going to stay in my room! And I’m NOT HAVING ANY DINNER!” We were hard pressed as to why this would be a bad thing inasmuch as it pertained to everyone else, but we went along with it anyway. Unfortunately she changed her mind, but at least if she’s going to be among us she’s behaving fairly well so far.

We had talked tentatively about a pilgrimage to that mecca of wholesome family spending entertainment, Disneyland, but obviously this will have to be pushed out a ways longer. No way are we allowing any of our children to soil the hallowed grounds in Anaheim with their ill-managed bodily functions.

I’m starting to think we should just feign ignorance and send them to school anyway on these days off. By the time the authorities figure out our harmless little “misunderstanding” we will have bought at least four hours of solitude.

A FB friend finally posed the question: just what purpose DO those paper toilet-seat covers actually serve, anyway?

Food for thought, indeed!

For lo, they are not an impermeable barrier, and therefore will not protect thine bum from anything moist on the seat (ew!), and as they are nearly microscopic sheets of tissue paper, what actual protection from germs do they offer?

A brief Google search yielded several fairly knowledgeable sources (an infectious diseases expert, etc) pooh-pooh’ing the idea (see what I did there?) and stating that it was mostly psychological — reducing the “ick factor” more than anything else.

It turns out that toilet seats are actually about fifty times cleaner than common items that are handled often such as telephone receivers, computer mice, and office desks. And, unless the skin on your backside is compromised, you’ve already got a built-in barrier to anything icky that might be lying in wait on that seat.

And, just to put your mind(s) further at ease, STD bugs can’t survive outside the human body for long, just minutes really: so unless you’re having unprotected sex WITH the toilet seat AND a person carrying such diseases, your pink bits are safe.

I personally had always doubted the usefulness of a such wispy paper product. Plus when I was younger and in possession of somewhat less fine motor control as I now enjoy, I found that it was impossible to get them to stay neatly on the seat and not slip around when you sat down, and speaking as a semi-compulsive who frustrates easily this was SO NOT OKAY with me. So I’ve been sitting with impunity (after a brief check of the seat for cooties), or in the case of scary foreign toilets with evident soiling, hovering inaccurately above the seat (particularly when drinking or on moving trains, or once, spectacularly, drinking AND on a moving train). And, no unexplained social diseases so far!

I take it this is one of those personal decisions, but I rather like to leave them in the holder behind the seat, where they might serve as emergency toilet paper in case of outages. They’re strangely non-absorbent when used for this, but any old port in a storm, am I right?

So, because this blog is rather topical and amusing and not at all serious, and because I regularly read Lamebook and Failbook, I shall not blog about a) work, b) politics, c) whatever might pass as my intimate life, or d) anything illegal. Sadly, I don’t really do anything illegal, my intimate life is hopefully of interest only to myself and The Hypothetical Other Participant, I dislike politics, and confidentiality forbids me from posting anything about work anyway other than that I have a job of some kind and that it is in fact some kind of job that I have. Where I do job-related things, with others who have jobs also.

Sometimes we might also gather off-site and participate in non-job-related activities such as the consumption of certain types of beverages, but this is also hypothetical and usually related in some way to the fact that we have jobs, usually by the departure of one of us from the job to go to some other job. And again, what with my intrinsic tedium, I usually just have a soft drink. And occasionally tater tots, if we go to that one place where they have them.

What a gripping life I do lead.

So that leaves me with children, the weather, hobbies, pets, family, etc to blog about. This is actually an enormous relief since I’m not exactly all about controversy.

In the interests of giving you something to read about, then, here it is: it is freezing-raining, but it’s supposed to melt later and so we’ll all have to go to work anyway.

So we both want to get Kindles but can’t really justify it, between the various things we’re paying off and the unpaid time off we’ve both had to take and all that sort of rot.

We did ask for, and did receive, some Amazon gift cards to put toward this eventual purchase but had accumulated only enough to purchase one Kindle. The thought of getting one for oneself while the other party suffered through having to read actual books (I’m kidding, I love actual books, it’s just the sleek portability of potentially one’s entire library that is coercing me to the Dark Side, I swear it) kind of sucked the joy out of the situation, so we compromised.

As you all know, compromise is when neither party really gets what they want, and both go away dissatisfied.

But in this instance we can at least be soothed by the shiny new miniature technology in our midst!

Instead of Kindles, we got a Flip Slide HD video camera. It’s tiny and cute and takes four hours of video and stills and did I mention how tiny and cute it is? Now we can record the children being amusing and the cat being amusing and natural disasters being amusing being impressive and police misbehaving protecting and serving and hopefully one of the neighbors picking their nose or something.

I’m kidding, of course. Natural disasters aren’t amusing and I have little beef with the police (inevitable pork reference should go here but I’m trying to cut down on bacon jokes). But you get the idea.

I’m waiting expectantly for this renewal; the past few months have not been so friendly to me, physically speaking, with an extra special digestive tweak in particular, and I want my old intestinal system back. And while we’re at it let’s throw in some other perks like my hair color and girlish figure.

At any rate, no miraculous recovery occurred last night as the magical New Year came into being. Maybe I should have stayed up to ring it in. Alas, we elderly folk can’t handle erratic sleep patterns like the whippersnappers we once were, and by 10pm the Lovely Rhonda and I were both too pooped to party. Plus she had to get up in the frozen dawn to scurry off to work. I had originally intended to stay up, but you know how it goes, right? Nobody to party with, the bed calling wantonly from the other room, the knowledge that children have no mercy whatsoever and will be up at their maddeningly early usual time. When Rhonda’s alarm went off at 5:30am we both woke and commented that we’d neither of us so much as moved all night.

Of course, the fourteen pound behemoth cat laying across our feet probably helped that. But judging from the drooly delicious fuzzy-headedness I was in, I’d say it was sheer exhaustion.

Often when Rhonda leaves I am unable to fall back to sleep but this was not the morning for that, no sir! My next coherent thought occurred at eight o’clock when piercing little-girl voices heralded the New Year from the living room. The little darlings were playing amongst themselves.

Today the littlest girls will go off to their dad’s and then Elder Spawn and I will take in a showing of “Tangled.” It’s a nice way to start the new year off right.